But it's nothing compared to the bear of a situation Creagh took on when he answered
Governor Rick Snyder's call to become interim director of the Michigan Department
of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) at the height of the Flint water crisis.

Keith Creagh ’74 leads Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources—experience that
prepared him for the Flint water crisis. He will give the address at Michigan Tech's
midyear Commencement December 17.

In April 2014, to save money, the city of Flint, Michigan, switched from Detroit's
Lake Huron water to water from the nearby Flint River. What appeared to be a fiscally
responsible decision came with two unintended consequences. The Flint River water
has a lower pH—a measure of acidity or alkalinity. It was more acidic, although still
within what is considered a normal or acceptable range. It also contained high concentrations
of chlorides, which cause the metal pipes carrying the water to oxidize more easily.

Detroit's water was treated with polyphosphates to counteract the chlorides. Flint
River water was not.

General Motors was the first to notice the difference. Automobile parts in their Flint
plant were corroding at a much faster pace. GM investigated and found the cause of
the corrosion: the high chloride concentration. GM wasn't looking for lead. They were
looking at their iron-corrosion problem.

The company switched back to Detroit water and reported the reason to officials in
Flint.

"GM's findings should have raised a red flag for city and state officials," says David Hand, chair of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Tech and a water treatment expert. "Many of the water service lines in
Flint, the ones that run from the mains to commercial buildings and residences, are
made of lead. And the untreated Flint River water was taking the protective scale
off those pipes, leaching the lead right into the city's taps."

Residents began to complain. An angry contingent of citizens brought discolored, smelly
water to city hall. Not until October 2015—nearly a year and a half after the switch
to Flint River water—after pressure from the US Environmental Protection Agency and
an independent study by a Virginia Tech scientist, did the county health department
declare a public health emergency.

Amidst a national uproar, the director of MDEQ—the agency responsible for overseeing
water safety issues—resigned.

Enter Keith Creagh.

Creagh's first call came from Dan Wyant, erstwhile director of the MDEQ. Wyant, a
longtime friend and colleague, said: "I'm on my way out." Wyant said that Governor
Snyder planned to ask Creagh to take charge of the MDEQ. "And I am going to ask you
to do it," he added.

Keith promised his wife Laska his stint at MDEQ would be short.

The next call was indeed from the Governor's office. After promising his wife, Laska,
that the assignment would be temporary, Creagh accepted Snyder's appointment as interim
director of the MDEQ on December 30, 2015. "At that point, I only knew what I had
read about it," says Creagh. "But it was important. When you turn on the tap, you
ought to be able to drink the water."

Governor Snyder knew Creagh was the right man for the job. "Keith Creagh is incredibly
knowledgeable and passionate about Michigan's environment," the Governor says. "The
expertise and enthusiasm he brings to every task is unmatched."

"I asked Keith to step in during a very difficult time at the Department of Environmental
Quality, and he did not hesitate," Snyder goes on to say. "He has worked every day
to improve water quality, recommend updated, stricter standards, and change the way
regulators approach their jobs so that they are responsive and open-minded to concerns."

Creagh knew he had accepted a tough assignment. "I was not naïve," he says. "I knew
it would be fairly contentious."

"Fairly contentious" is an understatement typical of Creagh. "He has a different way
about him. He handles stressful situations calmly," says Michelle Crook, an environmental
engineer with the DNR and a 1992 Michigan Tech alumna who has worked with Creagh for
years. "He wants to hear everyone's point of view. And he really listens. But he also
challenges people not to accept the status quo."

Mike Irish, an associate professor of visual and performing arts at Tech who was a classmate in Creagh's 1974 Forestry class, recalls the same sort
of laid-back, big-picture guy. "It was always a pleasure to be on Keith's team," says
Irish. "He was real even-tempered, unflappable."

"I asked Keith to step in during a very difficult time at the Department of Environmental
Quality, and he did not hesitate."Governor Rick Snyder

Irish recalls the time when a couple of classmates "really got into it while we were
socializing after hours. Keith pulled them apart, took one aside and talked to him,
then talked to the other one. He defused the whole situation."

That's a skill that would stand him in good stead in the MDEQ and Flint.

Creagh soon discovered that nearly everyone was angry. The people of Flint were angry
that they felt that their water was poisoning them. MDEQ employees—who were being
reamed by the press and the public—were defensive. So were city officials. And the
EPA, the Governor, and the Michigan Legislature wanted answers.

They all wanted to know what had happened. They all wanted to know who was responsible.

"I went in understanding that people were angry," says Creagh. "And they had a right
to be. They didn't know whom to trust. I needed to be a good listener. I needed to
help them construct a community-based solution."

The first thing he did was establish an MDEQ emergency operations center to oversee
testing programs and analyze the water treatment and delivery system in Flint, to
determine actual conditions at that moment and what needed to be done going forward.

A residential program collected 23,000 water samples and tested them all.

MDEQ started a sentinel program to monitor the water quality and lead levels in hundreds
of homes throughout Flint. Another residential program collected 23,000 water samples
from Flint residents and tested them all. Processes were examined at the water treatment
plant, and initial conditions in the city's pipes were analyzed.

Creagh found many factors that played into the crisis. In addition to the lack of
corrosion control, Flint's water system was overbuilt for its current population and
manufacturing base. That meant less water was flowing through the pipes than they
were intended to handle.

"All water is corrosive, but if it's flowing, it's less corrosive," Creagh explains.
In Flint, water was being underutilized; it wasn't flowing through the pipes. "One
of the critical lessons learned was, how do you appropriately size infrastructure
for a city with a declining population and loss of manufacturing," he says.

He also found what he calls "analysis paralysis." No one wanted to make a decision,
because everyone was afraid they might be prosecuted or lose their job.

"I was a little surprised at how long it took to put the necessary programs in place,"
Creagh admits. "The difficulty in getting a consistent answer wasn't something I anticipated.
The capacity just wasn't there. The new mayor was working to build an administrative
structure to put programs in place to solve the community's problems."

Meanwhile, things were no better back at the MDEQ, where Creagh faced an atmosphere
charged with grief and fear. At his first meeting with the staff, he says, "there
was more than a little tension in the room. It was really intense, but not unexpected,
despite the fact that MDEQ staff consists of highly trained professionals."

Creagh credits his Michigan Tech education with teaching him "to look at the data."

"In the MDEQ, in Flint, in Washington, and in Lansing, we had a lot of voices hollering,
but never together," Creagh recalls. "They weren't listening to each other or paying
attention to the actual data."

Creagh credits his Michigan Tech education with teaching him "to look at the data."
He says he also learned at Tech to ask the bigger, deeper questions and to value a
diversity of expertise, because a multidisciplinary approach is the best way to solve
complex problems.

Everyone began investigating the Flint water situation. The EPA convened a data summit,
a consortium of experts that included the Wayne State University and Virginia Tech
scientists who had first reported the problem. The Governor brought in all the stakeholders—health
specialists, educators, water quality experts, nutritionists—to form the Flint Water
Interagency Coordinating Committee.

Members of Michigan's National Guard distribute bottled water to the people of Flint
in January 2016.

Creagh spent four wrenching hours before a congressional oversight committee. "It
was not a conversation; it was not civil," he recalls. He also testified before the
Michigan House and Senate Oversight Committees. There, he says, he found "civility
and thoughtful questions. They wanted to know what we can do to improve the system."

And Creagh, true to form, participated in an effort to reach out to community leaders
and ministers.

"We were guests in their community," he says. "We had to be respectful, and we had
to bring people together. The expertise is all here. The question is how you build
integrity and trust and make sure that everyone gets heard."

Before he took the interim director job, Creagh promised his wife it would only be
for three months. Three became six, and six became seven, while Creagh's biggest problem
was something that people call "work-life balance." Essentially, he was working 24/7,
taking his first briefing at 6:45 in the morning and his last conference call at 8
at night. "And then I could start my regular DEQ work," he quips.

Creagh started as interim director of MDEQ on January 4. His first half-day off was
Valentine's Day, February 14, when he watched the Michigan State-Indiana University
afternoon basketball game, then took his wife out to dinner. "You can do that for
a sprint, but not for the long haul," he remarks.

Laska Creagh agrees. "We were supposed to go to Florida for a vacation," she says.
"We couldn't go." But Creagh explains:

"I couldn't take the family to Florida while the people in Flint don't have safe water
to drink."

Keith Creagh testifies before the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
February 3, 2016.

Laska understood about the vacation. "My concern," she says, "was, how much stress
can he really take?"

Keith Creagh developed some good stress-busters. "You go home and jog or play old-guy
soccer," he says. "You go hunting or fishing. You try to find some solitude, some
place where the cell phone won't ring."

But when the time came for Governor Snyder to appoint a permanent MDEQ director, Creagh
stood firm. Flint's water, once again coming from Detroit, had improved in quality.
The MDEQ and the Flint water system were in the process of being restructured, with
processes put in place to prevent similar problems. So when Snyder asked Creagh about
staying in the job, his answer was simple.

"I made my wife a promise. And no offense, Governor, but I sleep with her."

Laska is relieved that he kept that promise, although "he brought Flint back with
him," she says.

That's true, Creagh agrees. "I'll still be in Flint," he says. "I appreciate the opportunity
to stay involved, to take it from a crisis to an ownership of responsibility, where
everyone realizes that you can't take care of the environment without considering
public health, that it's all about exposures, risks, and quality of life."

And besides, as Creagh is the first to admit, he doesn't like to leave anything unfinished.

What Really Happened to Flint's Water

David Hand was on Togwotee Pass, Wyoming, when he got the call from Keith Creagh.
It was 20 degrees that day in February, and Togwotee Pass is 10,000 feet up in the
Wyoming mountains, above Jackson Hole. Shivering as he stood outside, the only place
he could get cell phone reception, Hand—chair of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Tech and a water treatment expert—shared names of some of the world's
top water treatment specialists with Creagh, who was trying to get a handle on the
Flint water crisis.

Hand's own expertise is in treatment of organic compounds in water, and Flint's problem
involved lead—an inorganic contaminant—so Hand sent him to several colleagues. Among
them was R. Rhodes Trussell, whom Hand calls the world's expert on corrosion. Hand
co-authored a book on water treatment with Trussell.

Then Hand, Professor Marty Auer, and Assistant Professor Daisuke Minakata, all in Tech's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, were asked by 1991 alumnus Steven Tomaszewski, director of operations for North
America at General Motors, to do a historical assessment of GM's actions in relation
to Flint's water. GM, which had switched its water service back to Detroit in late
2014, had been accused of prior knowledge of Flint's water problems.

The team found that GM had switched water because the chloride concentration in Flint
River water was too high, causing corrosion of metals in automobile parts. "GM didn't
know anything about lead; they weren't looking for lead. They were looking for the
reason metal parts were corroding," Hand explains.

Even so, GM notified the Flint Water Authority of their findings, Hand says, but it
wasn't until a year later that anyone identified the reason lead levels in Flint's
water were rising.

What had happened, Hand says, is that when Flint switched from Detroit water, which
is treated with polyphosphates to keep scale on the pipes and prevent lead from leaching
into the drinking water, their new Flint River water was not treated with phosphates.

As a result, the high-chloride content of the water removed scale from the pipes.
Scale sounds like a bad thing, but it is actually protective of the metal pipes. The
scale itself contains some lead, which doesn't get into the water as long as the scale
is firmly attached to the pipes. And when the scale is gone, the chloride-rich water
can leach lead from the pipes into the water.

The pH of the water—a measure of acidity or alkalinity—was actually within the normal
range for drinking water, but with no corrosion protection, there was nothing to hold
the scale in place on the pipes, giving the chloride levels an ideal environment to
do their dirty work.

"Even at normal pH, you're going to see more lead when chlorides are high," says Hand.
Flint water is coming from Detroit again, so the corrosion-inhibiting polyphosphate
is being added now. But another problem interfered with the corrective action.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university, home to more than
7,000 students from 54 countries. Founded in 1885, the University offers more than
120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering,
forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, and
social sciences. Our campus in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway
and is just a few miles from Lake Superior.

Michigan Tech and GM Teach about Flint Water

General Motors and Michigan Tech were able to play a special role in the aftermath
of the Flint water crisis. With sponsorship from GM’s Ride the Waves program, 12
middle- and high-school teachers from Flint, Michigan, spent a week at Tech this summer,
learning about the Flint River watershed, drinking-water treatment, and wastewater
treatment.

The goal was to prepare the teachers to bring water resources issues, including Flint’s
drinking water situation, to their classrooms and students. And down the road, some
of those students might even be inspired to pursue environmental engineering, says
Marty Auer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Tech and program director of Ride the Waves.

“If we can reach these teachers, then we can stimulate a process that’s going to engage
the young people, and they are the ones who are going to have to do what is necessary
to protect our water in the future,” he observes.

The teachers spent time at Tech’s Great Lakes Research Center. They collected and analyzed data, took a trip on the research vessel Agassiz, where they took water samples and learned about water chemistry, plankton, sediment,
and benthic or bottom-living organisms.

The teachers were enthusiastic about their experience. “I learned a lot about how
the water gets into the Flint River (the watershed),” says Patricia Miller, a science
teacher at Carman Ainsworth-Baker Career Academy. “I can use it in biology when we
are talking about ecosystems and water cycles. In chemistry, I can incorporate it
in a ‘smells’ unit, and in physics, the force and motion of water can be taught.”